


There Will Be Blood

by blythechild



Series: Love Bingo [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Crime Fighting, Crimes & Criminals, Gen, Revenge, Secrets, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:29:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an effort to close seemingly unsolvable serial crimes, the FBI has taken the extreme action of creating a special unit staffed entirely by killers. It is Agent Sam Anoyle's thankless task to run the team, prevent them from killing one another, and save her flagging career all while attempting to clear cases that every other investigator has written off.<br/>[This summary is an overview of the entire story, not of the individual entries that will be posted as they are written - see Story Notes for entry-specific info]</p><p>This story is an original work and I assert creative copyright over the names, characters and events contained herein. This work contains adult themes and graphic violence and should not be read by those under the age of 18.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Will Be Blood

**Author's Note:**

> This story is about Sam's contentious relationship with one of her team members, Agent Henry Klaxton, as seen from his point of view.
> 
> Another, earlier interlude between these two can be read [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2566289).
> 
> This entry is also part of a prompt bingo line for the community love_bingo on livejournal.

He doesn’t sleep so he goes out at night with his headphones on for hours. Sometimes he finds that he’s run from dusk until dawn, the pinkish glow in the east scaring him with its sudden appearance. He’s made _promises_ , otherwise his nights would be filled with… other things. And he’s trying very hard to keep his word although he can’t pin down exactly why someone else’s opinion of him matters when it never has before. Ever. Anyway, considering everything, it isn’t really that shocking that eventually he finds himself running past her place each night. He ponders whether he ought to point out how easily he hacked the Bureau’s ‘secure’ personnel database to find her address, but when it comes right down to it, promises or not, he’s no angel.

Voyeurism bores him. He outgrew that aspect of sociopathy when he was ten, so he can’t put his finger on the fascination that her Victorian walk-up holds for him. But every night he finds himself passing it at some point. Some nights she’s up and he can glimpse slices of her life through the windows. They are like unfocused, luminescent Polaroids where she is always slightly out of the frame. Other nights, those portals are dark mocking his attempts to understand a life that is hopelessly alien to him. But the night that he turned the corner onto her street, his feet splashing rhythmically in the evening rain, and found _another_ puzzling at her mysteries, a new feeling overcame him: violation. Unlike everything else that swirled around her, he knew what to do with _this_. This was mother’s milk and he thrilled a little at the discovery. He was going to enjoy it.

He took note of the trespasser - the make and model of the car, license number (stolen if he was smart), general physical make-up, time and predatory position. It took mere seconds and his heart rate didn’t falter as he stored away the information and jogged by. _I’ll see you soon._

He chose different times to pass her place in the weeks that followed and after a month he had successfully plotted out the pattern of her stalker. The guy wasn’t there every night but he showed up at the same time whenever he did appear regardless of whether she was home or not. That indicated that the stalker was a bush league psycho with no real tradecraft. His predictability was sloppy and his lack of awareness in his surroundings was unacceptable. Hell, he even used the same car each time. 

It suddenly occurred to him that this might be an ex-boyfriend; love could make one messy, obsession could make one stupid. The hollowness that usual defined his reaction to almost everything flared with something new, sour and pungent. He couldn’t identify it at all but he knew that he didn’t like it. Maybe this wouldn’t be as much fun as he thought.

When he had settled on a plan it was the work of a minute to access the DC DMV database and, sure enough, the trespasser’s identity revealed itself like a bad smell. It was _his mother’s car_. Typical. At least he didn’t further the cliché by living with her as well. He didn’t want to make this any more cluttered than it had to be. She really wouldn’t appreciate that. 

He knocked on the door, flashed is FBI i.d. and gave the guy his most reassuring ‘routine inquiry’ smile and the sucker let him in without a second thought. He even offered him coffee. Before the guy could ask ‘cream or milk’, he was zip tied to a chair in his suburban ranch in the middle of the day when no one could hear him scream.

“Are you even FBI?” He was blubbering already and Klax hadn’t touched him yet. He might even wet himself before they were done. No tradecraft whatsoever.

“Yep. The badge is legit. I really am Special Agent Henry Klaxton.” He responded congenially. He didn’t care if this guy thought he was real or Santa Claus.

“Well… then, you can’t do this! I’ve got rights… there are rules you have to follow…”

“That’s true. In most cases. So here’s where we figure out if you’ve done your research or not.” Klax bounced down into a crouch in front of the trespasser as if he were talking to a small child and didn’t wish to scare him. “The woman you’ve been stalking… now, don’t go and insult my intelligence by denying it, okay? We’re past that. Do you know who she is?”

“S-sure. She’s FBI too. I saw her on tv a few months ago.”

“Do you know what she _does_ for the FBI?”

“She’s a profiler. She caught the Delta Ripper.”

Klax shrugged. Technically, they all caught the Delta Ripper…

“She’s more than that. She’s a Unit Chief in the Behavioral Sciences Division. It’s a special unit too - not like the ones you see on crime dramas. Do you know what it is?”

He shook his head, no.

“The official title is Aberrant Serial Crimes Unit. Inside the Bureau it’s known as ‘Freak Division’. The team is staffed entirely by killers.” Klax stood up and gave himself a moment. He felt that his penchant for drama was one of his more charming liabilities. “She’s _my_ boss.”

He smiled sweetly as the blood drained from the trespasser’s face. Suddenly the guy started thrashing in his chair and managed to knock himself over while Klax stepped back hooting with laughter. Maybe this would be fun after all.

“Oh hey, man. Careful now…” Klax reached forward and heaved the guy, and his chair, upright again. It took some doing considering the fight that was still in this guy, and that Klax had the physique of a six-foot chess club nerd. “So I take it that _you didn’t know that_ when you set your sights on her, huh? Well, now you know why your original assumption of due process was a little wide of the mark.”

Klax mustered up a convincing look of sympathy and patted the trespasser on the head.

“So long as I don’t make a mess with you, I can do whatever I like. I mean, its not like I do this sort of thing all the time… She’d catch on eventually and who needs the hassle of having your boss on your back 24/7, am I right?” Klax went to a small bag that he’d laid out on a nearby table. He pulled out a pair of unassuming pruning shears. “By the way, if you really didn’t know much about Samsara - ummm, Agent Anoyle, I mean - what was it about her that caught your attention?”

The guy’s eyes were riveted to the shears. Klax had to wave them in front of his own face a few times to get the trespasser to look at him again.

“Hey guy, focus, okay? Sam… what was it about her?”

“S-she’s beautiful.”

“Yeeeeeaaaaah…”

Actually, Klax viewed Sam as fundamentally compelling - like blood to sharks - but he sort of expected more than a psycho’s crush as motivation.

“B-but she’s arrogant. All of that p-preening about nailing the Delta… like nothing and no one could get one up on her. It’s been a while since I had a worthy one to gut… and she’s so pretty…” The man gulped, half in fear and half aroused. “Such a pretty thing to make a mess of. Maybe I’d keep her a while first… or parts of her… before I turned her into an object lesson for the rest of you.”

Klax snarked a little at the guy’s bravado but that feeling was back again, bile splashing the back of his throat. The sense of violation was much stronger this time and he knew why. His anger crested and all of his carefully honed social acceptability fell away like burnt paper. He stood before the trespasser as the essence of the man that he’d always tried to hide from others, the man that he’d held in check because Sam asked him to do so. But she wasn’t here now…

“Frankly, I don’t think that you’re good enough to be worthy of her.” He said quietly.

“Why? Because she’s FBI? I’ve had plenty of practice over the years…”

“Yeah, but hookers and co-eds don’t rate. Not against her. She’d gut you like a fish.”

And she would too. She used to teach tactical training at the Academy, she was an impeccable shot, and he’d seen her lay out violent suspects cold. She’d even had Klax by the throat once. Maybe he should’ve let the trespasser take his best shot…

“I guess you’d have to think that since she’s given you a job and all. She’d never see me coming though…” The little worm sneered forgetting his position for a moment.

“ _I_ saw you coming.” Klax breathed out in a complicated way. It was almost like language and, if Sam were present, he would have locked that response down tightly for fear of what she’d instantly understand about him. “But here’s the thing that you’re really not getting… She gave me a job and maybe I owe her for that. I owe her for other things as well.”

Klax stepped closer and waved the shears in the trespasser’s face again. The guy’s eyes dropped even before Klax spoke and he felt an old thrill rush through him again. 

“But no one gets to kill that bitch but _me_.”

He leaned in and the trespasser yelped trying to shift his chair back and away again.

“What are you going to do? I won’t touch her, man… I WON’T, OKAY! She’s all yours… _what are those goddamned clippers for?!_ ”

“These?” Klax looked at the shears curiously and then back to the trespasser. “Relax, I’m not going to kill you. It would take forever with these and I’m sort of on a timetable here, so… I’m just gonna take the fingers from your right hand.”

The guy started screaming even before Klax could move.

\-----

The shears had been dipped in bleach, broken into pieces, and tossed into the Potomac. The car, complete with seven neatly severed human fingers (he left the guy with both of his pinkies and his left middle finger which he felt was exceedingly generous of him), was abandoned and on fire in Anacostia. Naturally, it was stolen in the first place. The trespasser himself had been dumped a block from Mt. Vernon Hospital where he was no doubt receiving the best medical treatment that his HMO was willing to provide. Though how he was going to adequately explain his injuries to the receiving nurse without his tongue was a mystery to Klax. He was satisfied that Sam would never meet her would-be stalker and that the world was just a fraction safer than it had been that morning. After all, what could that guy do with only two pinkies and a middle finger? His solution had a kind of elegance that he appreciated, even if it left him mostly unfulfilled. Still, he had technically kept his promise to Sam. 

He had a momentary urge to tell her about it; despite her position at the Bureau, Klax thought that she’d see the irony in the situation and perhaps even overlook the violence. When he thought about Sam - _really_ thought about her - he didn’t see her as so different from him. She helmed their little ship of contentious freaks with a cold-bloodedness that he occasionally envied. And he was certain that it made the Bureau brass uneasy at the same time, which tickled him. She seemed broken in a way that the other ‘normals’ weren’t. The possibility was tantalizing - perhaps here was a slice of her life that he could understand… 

But he pushed that desire away as he had every other time it surfaced. Monsters didn’t have friends, and everything that he had ever learned about the emotions associated with them told him that he didn’t want any in the first place. Messy, whiny, fragile things. But sometimes, when one of his insights caught her unawares and she looked at him with the uncomplicated thrill of discovery… Well, he wanted more of that - he just didn’t know what _that_ meant. Regardless of his persistent daydreaming, he wasn’t deluded enough to confess his lunch break adventure in aggravated assault to his FBI boss in the hopes of fostering an emotional connection that he couldn’t even name. That was just crazy talk. All he had done was swat a fly - nothing to brag about in that. He was just establishing his territory. She would remain his to protect or destroy as it suited him.

It took him longer than expected to get back to Quantico and he could almost feel her radar ping as he exited the elevator onto the sixth floor of the Behavioral Sciences building. He made a beeline for the small unit kitchen and waited for her to pounce. But as always, she was softer than he would’ve been - suddenly appearing like a spider rather than roaring and scarring the ground with her claws.

“Have a good lunch?” The question was neutral, just like her carefully arranged expression. No amount of staring would reveal the seams of her disguise.

“Just some finger food.” Klax smiled brilliantly while pouring himself some coffee.

“It must have been a lot of fingers.” He suddenly wondered if she had him under surveillance. He shouldn’t underestimate her. “Lunch is an hour. You’ve been gone ninety minutes.”

He met her stare and just worked at what he could get from her disguise. Calm face, serious eyes, balancing her weight casually on one leg, her hip bracing the kitchen counter as she waited for her turn at the coffee pot… He mentally shook his head and told himself not to worry. If she knew, she’d have gutted him before he’d made it into the building. She had keen instincts and a sense of economy. No need to get blood all over the furniture, after all.

“Sorry.” 

He dabbed some spilled sugar from the counter with his finger, and licked it absently. Her eyes remained on him in silence for another half minute until she reached past him for the coffee with a sigh. If a rush of air could convey a complex thought, this one would’ve been _‘you’d better be behaving yourself’_. He smiled - he liked that she expected him to misbehave.

“We’ve been waiting for you. We have a new case.” She reached back to the fridge and pulled out the cream. She added just enough to her coffee to make it look dirty, and then she added some to his without asking. She got it perfect - as always. He would’ve never done that in a million years. “I need you to mentally strap in - we’re going to need you. This is a weird one, Klax.”

“They’re all weird ones, Sam. That’s why they send them to us, isn’t it? Give it to the team that doesn’t feel anything…”

“You guys _feel_. It just isn’t always appropriate, that’s all.”

“I’m touched that you make the distinction.”

“No, you’re not. None of you are. It pisses you off that there’s a dividing line in the first place and that you’ll always fall on the wrong side of it.”

She stirred her coffee, then his, before placing the spoon in the sink. When her dark eyes fell on him again, something surged inside. He had expected anger, but it was something else entirely. He couldn’t get a handle on it - didn’t have a memory of feeling it before - but it felt _dangerous_. Messy. He had a sudden desire to confess to her. _I nearly killed a man today because he thought about you too much. He wanted to break you and own the pieces, but your pieces belong to me. I want to take you apart - to see what makes you work - but something always stops me. I need you to know this… I need you to tell me what this means…_

She leaned in a little closer and concentrated, like the spider was deciding the best way to paralyze and cocoon a fly. Yep, this whole thing felt dangerous and he was starting to enjoy it. He smiled and she pulled back, confusion flirting with observation.

“C’mon. The rest of the team’s waiting to get briefed on the case details.”

He looked down at his coffee mug and then turned to follow her to one of the office’s conference suites.

“Did you poison the coffee?”

“No more than usual.” She took a loud slurp from her mug as she held the door for him. 

His smile became manic. Before long one of them would draw blood and after that, there was no telling how messy things would become. And he found himself very, very excited about that.


End file.
